I’ll be blogging from Rich Brooks’ press luncheon a little later today. The Kentucky coach should be at the podium around 12:10 or 12:15. Check back for the updates.
- That’s the end of the press conference.
- “The thing I think is critically important, as I mentioned, that extra month of practice is critical in the development of young players, particularly when they aren’t the ‘five-star’ players.”
- Says that Cobb could, at worst, play “in a small splint,” but could affect his receiving ability and his ability catch punts. Best-case scenario is that it settles down and he doesn’t have to wear a splint.
- Says Cobb’s body is “night-and-day better.”
- On Bobby Johnson, “I think he does a great job. He’s a guy that I met when he was coaching at Furman. He’s just a solid guy, no-nonsense fundamental. He’s obvisouly a guy who’s done a much better job than those who rank his recruiting classes. He’s done better job against certain teams than we’ve done.”
- Asked if Hartline’s return will do anything to Newton’s confidence. Brooks says no. Says that Newton better prepare as he has been preparing, that he’s going to be the guy.
- Says Mister Cobble has done good things, but they chose to redshirt him.
- “I don’t think anything is manageable this time of year,” when asked if Vandy is a more manageable road game.
- Asked about Ryan Mossokowski, says his strength is still not where it needs to be, but “his decision-making is pretty good. . . . I think that will be an interesting thing moving forward.”
- Vandy is throwing it more. “The other thing they did, they introduced a wildcat package with the freshman quarterback taking the direct snap.” Mackenzi Adams, “is a capable runner,” he’s not as good as Larry Smith, the freshman quarterback who was the Commodores’ starter before he got hurt.
- Says he likes the running back spot for the future. “They could all use an extra month of practice, if you will.”
- Said John Conner won’t play tight end, because he’s “not an on-the-line guy. He’s a move guy.” Means they like to put Conner in motion and block at point of attack.
- On Maurice Grinter, “You pretty much you know when you throw it to Maurice, he’s going to catch it. That’s never been the problem. The problem has been his blocking.”
- On Newton, “He still has a long way to go.”
- Said Newton through tight spots, rifle shots, and “much better accuracy and much better decision-making,” against Eastern, but part of that was because he was not going against an SEC defense.
- On Newton, “I see a guy who has always had some confidence, but had trouble adjusting to the speed of the decision-making.”
- Says he wants to make sure that Hartline won’t “be hobbling around,” this week in practice.
- Says “I think the Morgan Newton you saw Saturday was light years away from the Morgan Newton you saw in the Auburn game. That progress has been evident to us as we’ve gone through practice, the last two weeks particularly.”
- “You can go through any of those games we’ve played them and you can take one play, one play, and it’s the difference between winning and losing.”
- Says his point is that Vandy has never been an automatic win for Kentucky.
- Players said they haven’t gotten over Mississippi State game. Brooks says he wants to get them over that.
- Asked about quarterbacks by Chris Cross. Brooks says Hartline looked pretty good last week, and ran around a little Sunday. He says that Hartline will try to go through a full practice on Tuesday. Says Hartline was a lttle bothered running around Sunday.
- Says only game that Vandy’s defense got “gashed a little bit” was the Georgia Tech game.
- Says Vandy coach Bobby Johnson always puts on the field a sound, well-coached team.
- “This is a series, and a game, that has been as close as it can be, year-in and year-out.”
- Talks about the competitiveness of the series. UK leads series by one game.
- Randall Cobb will practice in a cast on Tuesday. His other ailments are “light years better than a week ago.” Says also that Derrick Locke will practice, and feels much better.
- Ross Bogue has a strained knee. Hopes to take some reps in practice on Tuesday. Gene McCaskill will probably miss practice because of a turf toe. Trevard Lindley suffered a regular ankle sprain Saturday, and will try to practice Tuesday.
- Brooks says that T.C. Drake will miss the Vady game with a pulled groin. He will miss 2-3 weeks.
- The UK-Georgia game will be at 7:45 p.m. on Nov. 21. It will be on either ESPN or ESPN2.
- Morgan Newton was named SEC Freshman of the Week.
- Rich Brooks is in the house. So we will getting started in a couple of minutes.
- Susan Lax wants to make sure we mention that the UK women’s team has an exibition game tonight at 7. And the women open the season Friday at 11 a.m. — yes, 11 a.m. — at Memorial Coliseum against Boston University. It’s the first women’s game of the college basketball season.
- Player interviews today were Alfonso Smith, Corey Peters and Calvin Harrison.
- Here at Wildcat Den. We’re getting ready to interview the players. I’ll have video of that later on today.
